pain is a well-intentioned weatherman
by altschmerz
Summary: When Dean gets home from apocalypse world, Sam is on traumatic brain injury protocol. He was fine when Dean left. He was fine. (for the prompt "Sam's gotten a lot of knocks to the head recently. He's fine-except not really." AU s13e18, Bring Em Back Alive - Gabriel's recovery is postponed and Ketch returns from apocalypse world, only to be barely relevant. gen.)


so, looks like i wrote something for supernatural for the first time in four, five years? here's this, i guess, i hope i kept my old knack for it. written for ladykiki in spn summergen.

also; all medical knowledge and depiction of this event based on 1. medical procedural dramas and thus highly inaccurate, i'm sure, and 2. my own personal experience with the time my younger sibling was put on traumatic brain injury protocol.

title from sleeping at last's 'touch'

* * *

The reception Dean gets when he and Ketch return to the bunker is… not what he had been expecting. Insofar as he was, in fact, expecting a reception. Present circumstances accounted for, he'd at the very least have expected Sam to be passed out at the table, fallen asleep waiting for him to get back from the apocalypse world, maybe Castiel sitting next to him reading some ancient-ass text from the library. Hell, Dean would've expected to fall right out into the middle of a throw-down with Asmodeus before he would've called this.

This, which is an empty room. An empty, still, silent room.

"Really rolling out the welcome wagon, I see." Ketch's dry remark elicits a withering glare from Dean.

"Dude, shut up," he snaps, not in the mood. It's already easy to wish he'd just left Ketch in the other world, to help Charlie and the apocalypse worlders out. They hadn't, though, which means Dean gets to deal with his irritating commentary, delivered in his even more irritating accent, on top of the current sense of cloying dread hanging over the empty, empty room.

Maybe they'd just lost track of time. Maybe they were talking to Gabriel, come miraculously out of his trauma induced catatonia less than a day after being rescued. Maybe a hundred things none of which were cause for alarm, or more alarm than they're already feeling on a daily basis, but Dean doesn't have the feeling it's any of them. He has a bad, bad feeling. The kind of feeling he'd had before. The kind of feeling he'd had in Cold Oak, more than a decade ago.

Creeping fear is never a feeling Dean dealt with well, so it comes out more like irritation when he shakes his head and calls out, loud and echoing, "Sam. Sam! Where are you, man, come on!"

Nothing. Dean can almost sense Ketch standing behind him, rolling his eyes. This just makes Dean's voice get louder, snappy. " _Sam_! Cas? Anyone _home_?"

Footsteps sound down the hall, hurried and growing louder as the person approaches.

"Finally," Dean says, voice still amplified - and annoyed. "You'd think you forgot I was in another-"

" _Dean_." Castiel's harsh hiss of his name interrupts him mid-sentence. "I am very glad to see you are back alive but you have to lower your voice."

" _Lower my_ \- What?"

"I really wish there was an easy way to tell you this," says Castiel, with his face creased in an intense frown and his voice still at that weird half-volume, "but right now for Sam's sake you need to talk _quietly_. Sam needs you to be quiet."

Amazing, how just those words, 'for Sam's sake', and all of the irritation is gone, replaced by a sharp surge in that sick dread.

"What do you mean for Sam's sake," Dean asks. His voice is lowered, like Castiel had asked him to do, but his heart is beating audibly in his ears, his own pulse thumping in his head like the drum that beats louder and louder in the scene right before the monster attacks the hero. "What happened? Why does Sam need us to be quiet?"

"Because your brother is-" The way Castiel shakes his head when he breaks off, lips pursed tightly together, is excruciatingly human and excruciatingly worried. "Look, Sam…"

"Tell me. I don't care if there's no _easy_ way to tell me, just tell me what the hell happened to Sam. Where is he? Why isn't he here telling me to shut up himself?" Dean's voice began rising again at some point, Castiel's swift raise of a hand prompting him to quickly lower it again.

"Okay." There's a pause. Castiel shakes his head again. He can't seem to look Dean in the eyes, and it makes Dean's lungs feel like they're frozen in his chest. "While you were gone, Sam had a fall. He fell down the stairs and hit his head on the ground. He seemed fine, just a little shaken, but he was too dizzy to stand up, and it got worse from there. My grace has been… exhausted, trying to help Gabriel, I didn't have enough left to heal him, and I still don't. So we called Dr. Katz, the woman you met a few months ago who works in the Emergency Room. You remember her, right?"

Dean nods tightly. He remembers.

Somebody probably said at some point that every job comes with perks. That sounds like the sort of useless bullshit people trot out when both they and the person they're talking to feel like they're slowly suffocating in their professions. Despite this, and the fact that Dean feels like his personal profession is suffocating him rather quickly at any given moment, there's a ring of truth to it. Even this job has a perk, in that the people they've met in the course of it - at least the ones still alive after - generally owe them just about the biggest favor a person can owe another person.

Which is how there had been an Emergency Room doctor willing to drive to a creepy bunker and not ask questions about why they hadn't driven the man with the serious head injury to the nearest hospital. She had also been willing to tell them how to take care of Sam at home, until Castiel regained enough grace to fix Sam's wounded head. Knowing a doctor who understood that excuse prevents some of the stickier conversations folks with the last name 'Winchester' have had with various doctors on various occasions, but knowing he won't have to give yet another concerned physician the the run-around doesn't do anything to lessen the blow to the chest that was hearing the words 'Sam' and 'traumatic brain injury' combined.

"So Sam is… He's on…."

"Traumatic brain injury protocol," repeats Castiel patiently, expression creased with worry. It's no easier to take in the second time than the first. "Dr. Katz said the injury itself would've been minor, probably not even a concussion, except that head injuries are cumulative, and with the amount of blows to the head Sam has sustained in the last year… She said she wasn't sure if it was a minor traumatic brain injury or post-concussion syndrome, but either way, if it weren't for my ability to heal him, he would be looking at weeks, maybe months of recovery time."

Head injuries are cumulative. The words rattle around in Dean's own mind, getting louder with every revolution. Head injuries. _Head injuries_.

Sam, collapsing after being thrown into a wall. Sam, going down like a rock. Sam, on the floor, bleeding from the head, again, again.

Head injuries are cumulative and who only knew how many Sam had accumulated, over the past year. Dean's blood rushes louder, and his chest feels tight.

"Is he-" He stops, swallows hard. "How is he?" Even as he asks the question, Dean feels acid hatred boil in his gut, eating away at him. Which is fitting, considering it was directed there to begin with.

 _How is he_ , he thinks viciously. _Good fucking question, Dean. He's on traumatic fucking brain injury protocol. How is he? Jesus._

"I've been taking care of him," Castiel answers, ignoring the idiocy of the question. "He's in a lot of pain, and he's having trouble regulating his emotions, which the doctor told me was typical of those suffering head trauma. I've been doing the best I can for him."

"So what, we just… wait around? Until you're juiced up enough to heal him?"

Castiel looks like he's about to answer, his tired face suggesting that answer is going to be a frustrated, worn-down 'yes', when he's interrupted by the last person Dean wanted to enter this conversation.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Suddenly reminded that Ketch is in fact present with them in the bunker, Dean turns on him.

" _What_?"

"We've got to work on getting back to the other world, getting ready to take on Michael, not to mention how Asmodeus is likely to come crashing down on us like a ton of oddly-dressed bricks when he discovers where his prize possession has got off to. And trust me, he _will_ find out."

Taking a deep breath so he doesn't start shouting or throwing punches the instant he turns to look at Ketch, Dean counts to three.

"Ketch," he forces through gritted teeth, "what is your _point_?"

"My _point_ , Dean," Ketch says in a voice that sounds as irritated as his pinched face looks, "is that we do not have time for you to waste... coddling your brother. We have preparations to make. A world to save, remember?"

Not throwing punches swiftly becomes a much more difficult plan.

" _Waste_ time _coddling_ my- Man, you better shut the hell up right now before I toss your ass out and give Asmo-whatever a call. The world can wait…" Dean shoots a look at Castiel, motioning for him to elaborate on how long it will take before the angel-tank is recharged enough to heal Sam.

"A day," Castiel says, answering the unasked questions. "Maybe two."

"The world can _wait_ ," Dean repeats, turning back to Ketch, "a _day_ , maybe t _w_ o, while I take care of my brother, who has a _brain injury_ and has already given this world everything. More than everything. More than once. I think we've earned a day. If there's something that needs to be done immediately, you know what, you can figure it out yourself."

Without waiting for Ketch to respond, sure that if he hears the man say one more word he's gonna break something in his smug British face, Dean stalks out of the room and down the hall. He's halfway to Sam's room, Castiel just a few paces behind him, when he realizes that's where he's headed to. Dean's footsteps slow as apprehension builds. Sure he'd talked a big talk about taking care of Sam, but he's come to realize he has no idea how to do that.

"So what does…" He shakes his head, voice awkward and halting. "What does, uh, traumatic brain injury protocol look like."

"Limited light exposure. No use of screened devices." There's a huff of amused breath from Castiel, almost a laugh but too bruised, too drained to really be one. "I have already caught him using his computer once and his phone twice, after he was explicitly told not to. He's to avoid moving unless necessary. Rest, mainly. Rest and limiting stimuli."

"Thanks, WebMD." The joke doesn't really have any heart in it, not when the door to Sam's room just came into view. "So what have you… What've you been doing so far?"

"I've needed to split my time between Sam and Gabriel." Catching the look on Dean's face, Castiel shakes his head. "Still no progress with him. I've been trying anything I can think of, but he's still… At any rate, I've just been sitting with Sam. I've gotten him water a few times, but mostly I've just kept him company. I don't think he wants to be alone, and honestly, I think he's bored. I've been…" At this point Castiel looks down. He looks almost embarrassed. "I've been reading to him. Quietly, he's sensitive to sound, but… He's in pain and with the trouble regulating emotional responses, I've found it best to just be with him. Reading aloud kept us both occupied."

Dean nods. It makes sense. Sam had always liked that when they were kids, when he was sick and his head hurt. Which certainly sounds like the situation they find themselves in now.

When they reach Sam's room, Castiel motions for Dean to wait in the doorway. Being given instructions to hang back while someone else approaches his badly hurt brother grates at every instinct Dean possesses, and prompts more than a little hurt pulsing in his chest. Guilt guts him as Castiel kneels on the floor next to the bed, barely visible in the low illumination cast through the door from the hall. None of the lights in the room were on, and Castiel didn't touch the switch when he entered. Dean doesn't dare to either. Not when the light could cause Sam still more pain.

Castiel is speaking to Sam quietly, too quietly for Dean to make out anything he's saying. His voice is pitched so low that not even the faint buzz of his words are audible. The only way Dean can tell he's speaking his the movement of his jaw. As he talks, Castiel reaches out with one hand, laying it against the side of Sam's face.

Whether he means to help focus Sam's attention or merely comfort him to what extent possible is unclear. Whatever the intention, there's tenderness in the touch, in the way his thumb smooths over Sam's cheek, feather light and more careful than it would be easy to assume him capable of, knowing what he was, what kind of power an angel possessed. A being with a true form the size of the Chrysler building is crouched on the floor next to Sam's bed, talking to him in a voice so quiet it's inaudible from fifteen feet away, and touching him like he's something precious and fragile.

Of course, Dean already knew the first part. It's the second bit he's having trouble with. Because Sam is right now. Fragile. Which is why, when Castiel stands, thumb stroking once more over Sam's cheek before his hand withdraws to wave Dean over, he hesitates.

Everything has gone wrong. Everything is _going_ wrong, and Dean is suddenly gripped by the notion, irrational even for them, that if he goes over there, he'll make it worse. Somehow, if he goes over to Sam, if he touches, speaks to, looks too closely at his brother, Dean is going to break him.

Break him _more_.

It takes a long few moments for Dean to struggle out of the paralysis gripping his body and walk over anyway. Castiel pats him on the shoulder as he passes on the way out of the room, leaving Dean alone with Sam and his own fear, rising high in his throat and choking him. He steps abruptly away, following Castiel out into the hall, calling his name in a clipped, muted grab for his retreating attention.

"What am I-" Dean starts and stops. Castiel looks at him without responding, patiently waiting for him to finish. "How am I supposed to-" He can't quite get the questions out all the way, though, and having to ask them is making him ache.

Because what he's asking is how to take care of Sam. He's asking Castiel now to take care of his own little brother, and sure he'd not been there for Dr. Katz's instructions, but Dean can't help but feel this somehow violates the natural order of things. Asking someone to explain to him how to take care of Sam is shameful and it hurts, but he grits his teeth and finishes the question nevertheless. What's important right now isn't Dean's pride, or his feelings of failure. What's important right now is Sam.

"What am I supposed to do?"

The answer he gets isn't the one he was hoping for, which is to say anything at all to help guide him, give him some clear direction.

"You can't fix this for him," Castiel says, not unkindly. "There's nothing you can do to make it stop. But you can help make it better. Just take care of him. Sit with your brother, Dean. He needs you." With a pause, a hesitation, Castiel clears his throat. "While you do that, I think I'm going to… I'm going to go sit with mine."

Dean watches Castiel's back retreat down the hall, towards wherever they'd last left Gabriel, and wishes the uncertain nausea in his gut would die down. _There's nothing you can do to make it stop._ That was his job, though, wasn't it? To find what was hurting Sam and make it stop?

It takes several long moments for Dean's eyes to adjust to the dark of Sam's room. There's no way in hell he's going to risk turning the light on, so he closes the door behind him and stands in the threshold, waiting for the shapeless gloom to solidify, take on some kind of distinct features. When it does, he walks over to the bed, to where Sam's form lays curled on his side, on top of the duvet and wrapped in a blanket Castiel must have brought him from another room.

When he sits gingerly down on the bed, Dean reaches out tentatively, with a hand that halts and wavers, unsure if this is a good choice. His fingers touch Sam's shoulder, moving to flatten and slide to his back. Beneath his palm, Dean can feel Sam breathing, the labored heaving of his lungs that betrays, though he makes no sound, how much pain he's in.

"Oh, Sammy," Dean whispers absently. His thumb moves in slow strokes, smoothing over the fabric of Sam's shirt. He feels Sam's breathing abruptly change, catching and shifting.

Talking. Sam is trying to talk.

"De-" His voice is breathy and barely audible. "De-an. You're… You're-re… You came back."

Dean hums in the back of his throat, patting Sam lightly. "Sure did."

"What…" Speaking is obviously extremely difficult for him, Sam's voice petering off at the end of the word. Before he can try again, Dean interrupts, keeping his own tone low and quiet.

"Doesn't matter. It can wait. Right now, you just need to rest, okay?"

Spotting a few indistinct shapes on the bedside table, Dean remembers what Castiel had said, when he'd asked how they'd been passing the time since Sam's accident. Shifting to reach over and grab the book and the small flashlight set next to it, Dean's weight momentarily leaves the mattress. Behind him, he suddenly feels Sam moving as well, alarmingly large movements. Snagging the book and flashlight, Dean turns back around and catches Sam by the shoulders, guiding him back down to the bedspread.

"Hey, hey," he says, catching his voice rising and swiftly tamping it back down when Sam flinches. "Sorry. But you gotta lay down, your brain's all…" Scrambled. Bashed. Fucked up.

"Stay," Sam is panting, when his words become legible. "Please, p- stay. D'n't- St-"

"Hey," Dean says again. Sam's gasped pleas are damp and so is his face, when Dean cautiously touches it, trying to calm him down. "Hey, no, I'm not going anywhere. I promise, I'm not. It's okay. It's okay, shh, it's okay. I'm sorry, Sammy. I'm sorry." He mouths it again, 'I'm sorry', empty and soundless. His fingers skim Sam's hair, but he doesn't dare move his hand, comb through it like he usually does when Sam is laid low, in too much pain to pretend he isn't in any at all. Instead Dean tries to comfort Sam by caressing his temple, running his knuckles down his cheek, sitting silently next to him until he calms and stills.

"Sorry…" breathes Sam when he regains his bearings, and Dean snorts.

"Mn-m." The rebuke is toothless and without strength. "Nope. No apologizing for being upset when your shit's all upside down and inside out. You can't help it."

 _'Difficulty regulating his emotions', yeah, Cas, thanks._

"I was just grabbing your book. Cas told me he was reading to you and I…" Sam's eyes are closed and it's dark anyway, but Dean still shrugs.

The book is kind of tattered, likely something Sam picked up at a second-hand store somewhere through the years, and Dean is totally lost, picking up in the middle of the story.

It doesn't matter, though, because the book isn't the point.

Sam settles, when Dean starts reading aloud. He shifts painstakingly slowly, making the occasional muffled noise of pain, until he's resting curled against Dean's hip, face buried in his side. Taking this in stride, Dean shifts the book into one hand, laying the other between Sam's shoulder blades. Sam's face presses into Dean's shirt, forehead jammed against his ribcage, and he's got one hand gripping the leg of Dean's jeans. It's like he's trying to get as close to his brother as he can, like the pain will go away if Dean holds him close enough.

It doesn't work like that, unfortunately, much though Dean wishes it did, that he could take it all away with something as simple as an embrace. Sam is still on traumatic brain injury protocol, still gripped in a world of hurt, and all Dean can do is read _The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy_. Just read and hold him and wait for Castiel's grace to resurge, to be powerful enough to help the brain damage Dean hopes to a God that isn't listening Sam hasn't suffered.

The paralytic fear of doing the wrong thing that's held sway over him since he heard about what happened seeps farther and farther away as Dean continues to read. He couldn't care less about the book or the story contained therein, focus only on it as much as necessary to keep processing the words from text into speech. Most of his attention is on Sam, by this point near in his lap. Sam, who has been relaxing incrementally as Dean's voice fills the air, quiet and softened from its usual gravel rumble. It's now, feeling this, that Dean realizes the questions he'd been asking Castiel, the anxiety, the insecure wondering what the hell he's supposed to do… all of it was for nothing, because right now, with nothing else material to do to make him better, all Sam wants is all he's ever wanted, when he's afraid or hurt. He just wants Dean there.

Well, that, Dean can do. Dean can't heal him, can't make his head better, can't get them a brand new life where Sam's brain doesn't get slammed around every five damn minutes, but that he can do. He can sit here with his arm around Sam and he can read to his little brother.

As he's thinking this, Sam makes a muffled noise at the back of his throat, pushing his hand, still white-knuckle clutching the fabric of Dean's pant leg. He's protesting the fact that Dean's stopped reading, presumably, voice slowed to a halt as he lost himself in thought.

"Sorry, Sammy," Dean murmurs, acknowledging the complaint with a rub of his palm over Sam's upper arm.

He keeps reading.


End file.
